A digest of events, trends, issues, ideas and journalism from and about rural America, by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, based at the University of Kentucky.
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Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Minneapolis workshop will discuss how to prepare students to be reporters in community journalism

Do you have ideas about, or would you like to learn more about, how journalism educators can better prepare students for reporting jobs in community journalism? A four-hour workshop in Minneapolis on Aug. 3 is for you.

The workshop, “Putting the ‘Hyper’ Back in Hyperlocal: Teaching Students to Get Excited about and Involved in Community Journalism,” is a pre-conference session at the annual convention of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications, the largest annual journalism gathering in the U.S., at the Minneapolis Hilton from 1 to 5 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 3. It's sponsored by two AEJMC interest groups, Community Journalism and the Community College Journalism Association.
The program blurb says, "The days of the regional newspaper are numbered, and when local newspapers lay off reporters, there is a hole that needs filled in community reporting. For journalism educators, the question remains how to prepare students to fill this role. This joint session with CCJA examines different approaches to preparing students for careers in community and hyperlocal journalism. These approaches include both classroom exercises from veteran educators and researchers, in addition to advice on how to launch a hyper-local reporting effort from advisers who have overseen these projects."

The panelists will be specialists in community journalism: Bill Reader of Ohio University, a former community newspaper editor; Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky, publisher of The Rural Blog and a former weekly editor and manager; John Hatcher of the University of Minnesota-Duluth; Toni Albertson of Mount San Antonio College; Barbara Selvin of Stony Brook University; and Tim Waltner, retired publisher of The Courier in Freeman, S.D., and former president of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors.

The fee for the workshop is $10. To register, click here, unless you have already registered for the conference, in which case click here. For additional information contact Hans Meyer at Ohio University, 740-597-3084 or meyerh@ohio.edu.

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About The Rural Blog

This blog generally follows traditional journalistic standards. It's not about opinions, though you may read one here occasionally. It's about facts that we think will be useful to rural journalists, non-rural journalists who do rural stories, and others interested in rural issues. We don't try to be provocative, so we don't generate as many comments as most blogs with the level of traffic we have, but we certainly invite comments -- and contributions, to al.cross@uky.edu. Feel free to republish blog items, with credit to us and the original source.